Saturday, December 10, 2011

For the first time in almost 60 years, the comic strip Buck O'Rue is once again available to entertain readers across the globe, this time in a collection covering the entire run of the strip, plus several months' worth of what appears to be previously unpublished daily strips and Sunday pages.

New cover drawn by Gerben Valkema.

The fifties are long gone, but not the stories they left us. Fans of Disney animation and comics have for decades known about the comic strip Buck O’Rue, created and written by Disney animator/storyman Dick Huemer and illustrated by Mickey Mouse artist (literally!) Paul Murry. Its two-year run 1951-52 is still one of those legendary features many know about, but very few have read. The idea to collect Buck O’Rue in book form was first discussed almost ten years ago and it is now our pleasure to present the resulting book: The Adventures of Buck O’Rue and his hoss, Reddish. Edited and compiled by Dick Huemer’s son Richard Huemer and Murry collector Germund von Wowern, more than 90% of the artwork in the book has been scanned from original 1950s proofs, bar a handful of late Sunday pages we were forced to restore from newspaper tearsheets. The result: Buck has never looked better.

The book is printed in black and white, but the Sunday pages were originally intended to be read in brilliant color. We therefore decided to share our far from complete collection of Buck O’Rue color Sundays with you here on a blog, to show you just how captivating and beautifully drawn the strip really is. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the ride so much you’ll get the book and spoil yourself with a practically complete run of the strip. But for now, just follow the label Color Sundays and begin a journey westward, to a town “so rotten it got booted out of the US of A”.

We have never seen any dailies after May 1952 published in newspapers of the time, and later strips may thus only exist as proofs. Our book contains the full run Jan 15, 1951 – July 19, 1952 scanned from proofs, bar the next to last week (July 7-12,1952) which sadly seems to be irretrievably lost.

Comments:The last Sunday we have seen published in a newspaper is August 24, 1952 (later pages likely only exist as black & white proofs). Neither have we found any published complete Sundays in newspapers from 1952, only the cropped versions (which were used by many if not most newspapers) with 1/3 of the artwork deleted, corresponding to 4 missing panels.Our book contains the full run of Sundays. They are all scanned from proofs, with the following exceptions which have been restored from newspaper tearsheets:1951: 12/16, 12/301952: 1/20, 2/3, 5/4, 6/8–7/6, 8/10–8/24This means that a mere 13 Sundays out of 100 are not scanned from excellent quality proofs, but the 11 tearsheet Sundays from 1952 are sadly all the cropped version. Need I mention that we too would love to see the complete versions of these Sundays?

Notice especially the christmas Sunday (#49), which is composed of panels from two different sources (and includes one panel partly restored from our black and white source). The two middle row panels were not used at all in the cropped 8-panel version run in many, or even most newspapers.

Episode title: None (gag pages)The last published Sunday we have ever seen is from August 24 (#84). Subsequent Sundays may only exist as black & white proofs and will thus only be presented in the book.

Episode title: Bet-A-Million BatesWe created a post for this story for the sake of completeness. This story never reached its conclusion
and the five Sundays that were drawn probably only exist as black and white proofs, and are thus only included in the book.